or indifferent characters proved the ruin of the order. Despotic rule
and espionage could never promote the cause of liberty and
enlightenment—and the founder of the order proposed to make
enlightenment the means of attaining liberty.
Then the dissensions ever growing more serious between Weishaupt and
Knigge. Whereas Weishaupt cared only for the ends of the society, all
else being in his eyes only incidental, mere formalism, Knigge, on the
other hand, being a man of the world, shrank in horror from the program
of his associate: religion, morality, the State were imperiled. He
dreaded Liberalist books, and would have been far better pleased to see
the order working on the lines of the Freemasons of that day, though
with an elaborate ceremonial and manifold degrees and mysteries, and
with some harmless, innocent ideal of human welfare and brotherly love
as the object of their endeavors. Weishaupt called Knigge’s pet
contrivance tinsel and trumpery and child’s playthings, and the pair of
“Areopagites” grew steadily ever more asunder.
This rising storm within boded less ill to the order than the attacks
from without growing from day to day more violent. Illuminism was
assailed by enemies of all sorts, that sprung up like mushrooms. First
there were the masonic systems of the reactionary or superstitious kind,
such as the Rosicrucians, the Asiatic Brethren, the African
Masterbuilders, the Swedish Rite, the remnant of the Strict Observance,
etc.; then such of the Illuminati as thought the hopes of the order had
been disappointed, or who expected to profit by a betrayal of the order
to the enemies of liberty and light; finally, and above all, there were
the sons of Loyola, ever laboring industriously in the dark though their
society had been suppressed, and now again, thanks to the licentious,
bigoted despotic Elector Charles Theodore, possessing great influence in
Bavaria, the country in which the membership of the Order of Illuminati
was of longest standing and most numerous. At that court, the seat of
corruption, some courtiers, professors, and clergymen who had been
members of the order, with the secret pamphleteer, Joseph Utzschneider,
at their head, played traitor, charging the order with rebellion,
infidelity, and all manner of vices and crimes, and at the same time,
without ado, classing with the Illuminati the Freemasons. By a decree of
August 2, 1784, the lodges of all secret societies established without
government’s approval, including the Illuminati and the Freemasons, were
banned. The masonic lodges submitted at once, and closed their doors;
but Weishaupt and his associates went on with their work, hoping to
change the mind of the Elector by bringing up for public discussion
their rules and their usages. Vain Hope. The Elector’s confessor, Father
Frank, an ex-Jesuit, who already had labored against Freemasonry,
procured on March 2, 1781, a second decree, by which the previous one
was confirmed, and all secret organizations that continued to exist in
violation of it, and specifically the Order of Illuminati, were
forbidden to hold meetings, and all their property was confiscated. The
Minister of State, Aloysius Xavier Kreitmayr, distinguished himself by
the rigor with which he executed the ukaz. Weishaupt was deposed from
his place at Ingolstadt, expelled from that city, and declared incapable
of legal defense; he had to flee the country. He first tarried in
Ratisbon; but soon, in consequence of the discovery of compromising
documents in a search of the houses of Illuminati, very grave charges
were brought against the members, and the Elector became alarmed for his
throne. Without distinction of class or station a prosecution was
entered against all persons accused of membership in the order, or even
suspected of sympathy with it, and they were imprisoned, deposed from
office, banished, and in the case of persons of the lower classes,
punished with stripes. This whole business was managed, without any
recourse to the regular tribunals, by a special commission under Court
direction. This persecution lasted till after the outbreak of the French
Revolution, and a refusal to condemn the French people was taken as
evidence of a revolutionary spirit. This system naturally fostered
ignorance among the lower classes, but among educated people it tended
to spread the principles of Illuminism, and to awaken opposition to
monkish rule in the state.
Weishaupt, no longer safe at Ratisbon, the Bavarian government having
set a price on his head, fled to Gotha, where Duke Ernest, a member of
the order, protected him, and made him Court councilor. Here he lived
till 1830, but he failed to resuscitate his order on an improved plan.
As for Knigge, he made haste to quit the incriminated order, and in his
prim, emasculate “Umgang mit Menschen,” strongly condemned all “secret
societies”—he, the old-time Templar, Freemason, and Illuminist. Few were
so stout-hearted and firm as Ignatius von Born, the naturalist, a native
of Transylvania, who had been a Jesuit, but who, after the suppression
of the Society of Jesus, had joined the Illuminati and become a
Freemason. After the suppression of the Bavarian lodges, Born, who was
then in the service of the Emperor Joseph II. at Vienna, sent back to
the Bavarian Academy of Sciences his diploma as member of that body,
accompanying it with a letter in which he bluntly declared that he would
rather be a Freemason than a member of a body with which he had nothing
in common. And thus was the cry of Voltaire, “Ecrasons l’Infame,” taken
up by the party against which it was first uttered, and by them given
effect in the shape of a most infamous persecution, before men of
enlightenment had made the first move toward “stamping out” what to them
seemed an “infamy.” For the rest it is said that the suppression of the
Illuminati was the result of an understanding with Frederic the Great,
whose policy was threatened by the order.
2. IMITATIONS OF ILLUMINISM.
Not long after the break-up of the Order of Illuminati in the South, a
similar order sprang up in Northern Germany. It originated in the brain
of a man unfortunately at once a zealous Illuminist and a morally
depraved vagabond, who made a deplorable misuse of the talents with
which nature had endowed him richly. This was Dr. Charles Frederic
Bahrdt, Protestant theologian, sometime preacher, professor, or teacher
in sundry places, and once even keeper of an eating house at Halle. In
1788 it occurred to him to found an association to promote enlightened
views, and his plan was to combine it with the masonic society, of which
he had become a member in England. The projected association he called
the “German Union of the XXII.” (Deutsche Union der XXII.), for the
reason, as he explained in a circular letter, that twenty-two men had
formed a union for the ends set forth. The Union was to be organized on
the plan of Jesus Christ, whom Bahrdt in a voluminous work portrayed as
the founder of a sort of Freemasonry, and of whose miracles he offered a
rather forced natural explanation. In accordance with this plan the
association was to be a “silent brotherhood” that was to hurl from their
throne superstition and fanaticism, and this chiefly by the literary
activity of the members. The literary labor was ingeniously organized in
such fashion that the Union would by diligent effort in time gain
control of the press and the whole book trade, thus acquiring the means
of insuring the triumph of enlightenment. Outwardly the Union was to
have the appearance of a purely literary association; but inwardly it
was to consist of three degrees, of which the lower ones were to be
simply reading societies, while the third alone would understand the
real purpose of the order, viz., advancement of science, art, commerce,
and religion, betterment of education, encouragement of men of talent,
remuneration for services, provision for meritorious workers in age and
misfortune, also for the widows and orphans of members. But inasmuch as
Bahrdt had painted this beautiful picture solely to make money, the
Deutsche Union existed only on paper; but it wrought for its projector a
protracted term of imprisonment, which he survived but a short time; he
died in 1792.
Another imitation of the Order of Illuminati, the League of the
Evergetes (Bund der Evergeten, or benefactors, or welldoers) which
sprang up at the close of the 18th century, had a longer term of life,
though but little expansion. Its activity extended over all the arts and
sciences, except positive theology and positive jurisprudence. The
members were designated after the manner of the Illuminati; but they
acknowledged no unknown superiors. Time was reckoned from the death of
Socrates, B. C. 400. The supreme head was called Archiepistat
(archiepistates, chief overseer); there were two degrees, of which only
the higher one had a political aim, popular representation. Fessler, by
his protests against such tendencies, brought about a split in the
association, and afterward his adversaries tried to convert it into a
sort of moral Femgericht by tracking and branding all offenses. One of
the three leaders betrayed the other two, and was with them put in
prison, but soon afterward released: that ended the association.
4. FREEMASONRY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
That there was any alliance of the Freemasons, or even of the
Illuminists, with the men of the French Revolution, which broke out in
1789, can be affirmed only by those who are ignorant of history or
wilfully blind—by men like the Privy Councilor Grolman of Giessen,
friend of Stark (significantly named in the Strict Observance, Knight of
the Golden Crab), or, like the abbe and canon Augustin Barruel in
France, or the ship’s captain and professor, John Robinson, in England:
their allegations were received only with ridicule, and passed into
oblivion. As we have seen, the Illuminati were to be found only in
Germany, where no revolution took place: in fact, they were no longer in
existence when the French revolution broke out. As for the Freemasons,
we have already shown that they were opposed to the movement; but that
movement could have no other ground than the dissatisfaction of the
people of France with the shameful Bourbon dynasty, whose mischief could
not be repaired by the well-intentioned but narrow-minded Louis XVI. No
critical or serious work of history gives any justification of the
belief that Freemasonry had a hand in bringing about that Revolution:
but a decisive proof of the true relation of Freemasonry to the troubles
of those times is had in the fact that the Terror made an end of the
Grand Orient of France. All the clubs of the French Revolution were
open: the people would not tolerate secret clubs, not even private
assemblages, and hence as early as 1791 began to persecute the
Freemasons as aristocrats. The Grandmaster then existing, Louis Philip
Joseph, Duke of Orleans, gave up his title, as we know, and called
himself Citizen Equality, and at last, in 1793, declared that he had
given up the “phantom” of equality, found in Masonry, for the reality;
that in the Republic there should be no Mysteries; and, therefore, he
would no more have anything to do with Freemasonry. That same year his
head fell under the guillotine, and his blood sealed the “reality of
equality”; and most of the members of the two zealous lodges, those of
the “Contrat Social” and of the “Neuf Soeurs” were taught, when they met
with a like fate, that “real” equality was a more dreadful “phantom”
than those they had pursued in the lodges. Only three lodges continued
in existence through the Terror by extreme caution and secrecy, and not
till the fall of the Terrorists did Brother Roettiers de Montaleau come
forth from the prison in which he had been incarcerated simply because
he was a Freemason.
Thus did French Masonry weather the terrible storm of the Revolution;
the German lodges in the mean time were busy in reforming and
strengthening themselves; for a season they withdrew into retirement,
and exerted no longer any influence on public affairs. Superstition and
child’s play fell into disrepute: the Rosicrucians, the “Asian” and
“African” orders, the Templars, and their like, condemned by public
opinion, had to give up their absurdities and return to right reason.
The general league of German Freemasons projected in 1790 by Bode of
Gotha, failed of realization in consequence of the death soon afterward
of that enlightened mason (1793); but its purpose was served, though not
in its whole extent, by the sturdy Eclectic League of Masonry
(Ekletische Freimaurerbund) founded as early as 1783, with headquarters
at Frankfort. This League has ever since rendered notable service to the
cause of genuine Freemasonry.
_PART TWELFTH._
_Secret Societies of Various Kinds._
1. SOCIETIES OF WITS.
The Comic has a place everywhere in history: there is no lack of it in
secret societies; indeed, in such societies it assumes many different
forms. For there be secret societies that would be comic; there be
secret societies that are comic without knowing it; and finally there be
men and parties that by their action against so-called secret societies
make themselves comic without intending it.
While Goethe lived at Weimar, there was formed in that city a satirical
Society of Chevaliers. Curiously enough it was suggested by Frederic von
Goue, a Knight of the Strict Observance and a strong believer in the
descent of Freemasonry from Templarism, but a comical old soul withal,
and author of a parody of Goethe’s Werther. The members took knightly
names: Goethe, for example, was Goetz von Berlichingen; they spoke in
the style of chivalry, and they had four degrees. In sarcastic allusion
to the revelations promised (but never communicated) in the high
pseudomasonic degrees, the degrees of the Society of Chevaliers were, 1,
Transition; 2, Transition’s Transition; 3, Transition’s Transition to
Transition; 4, Transition’s Transition to Transition of Transition. Only
the initiated understood the profound meaning of the Degrees.
Another society of similar nature was that of the Mad Court Councilors
founded at Frankfort-on-the-Main by the physician Ehrmann in 1809.
Membership consisted only in the receipt from the founder (in
recognition of some humorous piece) of a Diploma written in burlesque
style in Latin, and bearing the impress of a broad seal. Among men
honored with the diploma were Jean Paul, E. M. Arndt, Goethe, Iffland,
Schlosser, Creuzer, Chladny, etc. Goethe earned his diploma by a parody
of his own “Westoestlicher Diwan,”—“Occidentalischer Orientalismus.”
Many societies of this sort have since arisen, but those of Vienna are
worthy of special mention. One of these was called “Ludlamshoehle,”
after a not very successful drama of Oehlenschlager’s. It had many
distinguished men in its membership. The members were called Bodies, the
candidates Shadows. Though mirth was the only object, the police thought
it best to suppress the society in 1826. In 1855 appeared the Green
Island, a comic-chivalresque society, though it rendered good service to
literature and art. Several writers and actors of note belonged to it. A
society, the Allschlaraffia was founded at Prague in the ’fifties,
which, in 1885, had eighty-five affiliated societies in Germany,
Austria, Switzerland and other countries. A congress of the leagued
societies met at Leipsic in 1876, and another at Prague in 1883. The
president of each Schlaraffenreich (or society) was called Uhu, but on
festive occasions was Aha, and in condemning offenses against the
Allschlaraffia, Oho.
2. IMITATIONS OF THE ANCIENT MYSTIC LEAGUES.
There have been and still are in France secret societies that have
thought they could in our time transplant to Europe, under Masonic
forms, the Egyptian Mysteries. Once there was a Holy Order of the
Sophisians, founded by French military officers who had been with
Bonaparte in Egypt. The highest dignitaries were called Isiarchs, and
the rest of the officers of the society bore similar titles (mostly
fictitious) of Egyptian priests. The lodges were Pyramids, and their
aera began 15,000 years before Christ. Two orders which still subsist
are those of Misraim and of Memphis, both of which in downright earnest
trace their origin back to Egyptian antiquity and regard all the secret
associations mentioned in the present volume, except those having
political aims, as members of one grand association. The fact is that
the Misraim system had its origin in 1805, and was founded by some men
of loose morals, who contrived to get themselves received into a
Freemasons’ lodge in Milan, but who, because they were not promoted as
they had hoped to be, went out and formed a Freemasonry of their own.
The order spread first over Italy and in 1814 to France. The system has
no fewer than ninety degrees, grouped in seventeen classes, and three
series. Only the Grandmaster received the ninetieth degree: the
“content” of all the degrees is pure nonsense. The Memphis system was
introduced into France in 1814 by a Cairene adventurer. It held its
first lodge at Montauban in 1815, but has often since that time been
obliged to interrupt its work. The Grand Lodge of Paris was called
Osiris, the head of the order was Grandmaster of Light; the hierarchy of
officials was complex and showy. The degrees were more than ninety in
number, to which were added three supreme degrees, but the total was
afterward reduced to thirty. They comprised the Indian, Persian,
Egyptian, Grecian, Scandinavian, and even the Mexican mythologies and
theologies. Only two lodges exist to-day, and these the Grand Orient of
France took under its wing some years ago, they having given up their
silly ideas, and turned to sensible, beneficent work.
Another anachronism is the ghost of Templarism, which in the present
century, as in the last, walks abroad: but its connection with Masonry
is now rather loose, or even non-existent. Thus, there is no connection
between Freemasonry and the New Templars of Paris, whose traditions do
not differ from those of the New Observance. They reckon the years from
the founding of the order of Templars (1118), and their “learned men”
have imagined a succession of Grandmasters deriving from one Larmenius
of Jerusalem, nominated, they say, by Molay as his successor. But
Larmenius never existed. Here, then, is a new variant of the story put
forth by the Strict Observance, the Royal Arch, etc. A document is shown
to prove the nomination of Larmenius, but its Latin is not that of the
14th century; and, besides, only the Conventus of the Templars could
name a Grandmaster. After the Revolution the new Templars purchased a
splendid property in the Nouvelle France suburb of Paris, and from time
to time observed the anniversary of Molay’s death, having a solemn mass
of requiem performed. The Grandmaster, Raimond Fabre de Palaprat
(1804–1838) had under him four Grand Vicars for Europe, Asia, Africa and
America—indeed, the whole earth was parceled out among the members in
Grand Priories, Minor Priories, Comptrolleries, etc., and the wearers of
these titles were happy. There were Clerical Templars, too, the highest
grade being that of Bishop. The rules of the New Templarism permitted
none to be admitted to the order save men of noble birth: but many a
shopkeeper wore the white mantle with red cross.
There are New Templars also in England, Scotland, Ireland and the United
States, almost all of whom have received the so-called higher degrees of
Freemasonry. The English Templars are divided into two opposing parties,
from one of which came the Irish and the American Templars. No one is
competent for admission to any of these Templar societies who does not
believe that Christ came on earth to save sinners with his blood, and
the members must swear to defend this belief with their swords and with
their lives. But no one, alas, has yet heard of their deeds on behalf of
those imperiled articles of faith. Their lodges are called Commanderies.
They have Swordbearers, Bannerbearers, Prelates.
3. IMITATIONS OF FREEMASONRY.
The resuscitation of the ancient order of Druids is another example of
imitation of the secret societies of antiquity. Among the Kelts of Gaul
and Britain the Druids were, next after the nobles and the warriors, the
highest estate. Religion, art, and science were their exclusive
province: hence they were priests, poets, and scholars. Their head was a
Chief Druid, and they formed an order with special garb, a special mode
of writing, degrees and mysteries. The mysteries were certain
theological, philosophical, medical, mathematical, etc., dogmata, and
these were conveyed in three-membered sentences (triads). They believed
in the immortality of the soul and its transmigration, in one god,
creation of the world out of nothing, and its transformation (not
destruction) by water and fire. Their assemblies were held in caverns
and forests, on mountains, and within circles, ringed round with
enormous blocks of stone. The Roman emperors persecuted them as they did
Jews and Christians, because the Druidic mysteries seemed to them
dangerous to the state. In Britain the Bards, i. e., those of the Druids
who cultivated poetry and song, were the most influential division of
their order. There were three degrees of the Bards—Probationers, Passed
Scholars and Learned Bards.
In 1781 a society was formed in London whose members called themselves
Druids, and who practiced rites resembling those of Freemasonry. In 1858
there were twenty-seven mutually independent societies of Druids in
Britain, but by consolidation the number is now reduced to fifteen.
Druidism was introduced into the United States in 1833. Their local
organizations are called Groves, and the central organizations Grand
Groves. They have three degrees, to which are appended other higher
degrees, each with its own High Arch Chapter. There is no close
connection between British and American Druidism. In 1872 Druidism was
imported into Germany from the United States: there are in the German
empire forty Groves, with about 2,000 members. The order of Odd Fellows
is of English origin, but is very strong in the United States. It was
founded toward the end of the first half of the 18th century, but
appears to have been at first a convivial society of “goodfellows,” or
odd fellows, with mutual benefit as a secondary object. It was
reorganized in 1812, the feature of conviviality dropped, and the
beneficent ends made paramount; this is the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows. A rather similar organization, the Ancient Order of Foresters,
was founded in England about the same time with the Odd Fellows’ order.
Forestry also has been transplanted to the United States. American
Oddfellowship severed its connection with the British Grand Lodge in
1842. There were in the United States in 1889 more than 600,000
Oddfellows in 10,000 lodges. A society of American origin is that of the
Knights of Pythias, founded in Washington in 1864; its object is to
disseminate “the great principles of friendship, charity, and
benevolence”: it had in 1885 2,000 separate lodges and 160,000 members.
The Order of Red Men (Improved Order of Red Men) is of earlier origin
than the preceding: the members in their lodge meetings imitate some of
the customs of the American aboriginals, and wear an attire resembling
that of the Indians. Besides these there are in the United States very
many other secret societies having for their end mutual beneficence, as
Knights of Malta, Senate of Sparta, Knights of the Mystic Chain, Legion
of the Red Cross, Knights of Friendship, Royal Arcanum. The Grand Army
of the Republic was founded soon after the close of the civil war. Its
members are veteran soldiers of that war. Its ends are to perpetuate the
associations of comrades in arms, to relieve distress of members and
provide benefit funds, and to advance the interests of the members in
every honorable and lawful way. The badge of membership is a small
bronze button worn in the coat lapel.
THE END.
_INDEX._
African buildingmasters, 214
Akkadians, 26